Modern Marriage

Johanna Kendig
1/27/2013
ENC1101

Now a day, I feel like marriage is something that has become overrated in our society. “Tying the knot” sort of speak has grown to become the next phase in one’s life, oppose to waiting for the “right one”. In the modern world we live in, so many factors have come to play in what a marriage is supposed to be like. I feel as if divorce rates have grown and therefore, the true value of a marriage has deteriorated to practically not a agreeing over what tie to wear and filing for divorce the next day. Marriage has become a burden to overworked couples, a way of controlling your partner, and an excuse for vices when things go wrong. When I was married, I felt like my relationship had gotten to the point where it was too much work. After a long day of being with the kids and him working hard managing a restaurant, we didn’t have the energy to work extra hours. Sometimes things get complicated because of the pressures we encounter from other things. All I wanted to do at the end of the day was enjoy a quiet moment to myself and not turn my back and find a mess to clean or a crying baby to tend to. That’s when we disconnect from our partner and instead of sharing things we choose to not say anything at all. As a result, that’s when couples just give up. Another major mood killer was trying to control him since I couldn’t control anything else. I would want his hair a certain way or ask him to put on specific cologne. I would nag about everything little thing I could and drive him up the wall. Furthermore, at get-togethers remind him what not to bring up in front of my family; have him help with the attending to the kids while I would socialize for a few minutes. When chores needed to be done, I’d always have to assign duties so he wouldn’t be on his butt all day. Getting to the point where I just wanted him to do what I wanted, because I was miserable doing mostly everything by myself. Our discussions became so frequently, that he stared to drink randomly where place we went. I started to nag at that too at one point, and then it turned to him coming home late every day. Until I found out we had pushed each other some that he started cheating on me. That the day I realized that our marriage had changed everything, because we had been together so long before marriage and now everything had changed. Our bickering towards one another had driven him away to the point of looking for someone else to connect with. And that made me hate the idea of marriage. Once everything had happened and basically my marriage was over, I came to see that it wasn’t so much the commitment of marriage but what society has made it to be. It became clear that we had had pushed and grown apart from each other because we were so busy trying to be financially well and being a good house wife. We were so busy listening to everyone tell us how we should raise our kids and how to live our life’s and in the mist of it all we forgot about each other. As a couple, we forgot what was important which was to work as a team and come up from our struggles together not exclude one another out. At the end of the journey, I came to the conclusion that it was the expectation of the marriage that killed our relationship not us as people.